Local Stops

Ride the Next Wave

BAM’s annual festival culls the international performance landscape and plucks some gems for Brooklyn. This year’s theater offerings include:

The Deutsches Theater Berlin production of Emilia Galotti by 18th century writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, directed with a “severly minimalist approach,” by director Michael Thalheimer, who severely minimalized the original 4-hour text down to 75 minutes, etching and honing the script to bring out the play’s raw emotion. The plot centers around our favorite subject: the defilement of a beautiful bourgeois woman’s virtue. (10/12-15 at 7:30pm)

4.48 Psychose—celebrated playwright Sarah Kane’s seering, experimental portrait of mental illness, performed in French (English subtitles) by screen goddess Isabelle Huppert and directed at a “fever pitch” by director Claude Régy (10/19-22, 25-29 at 7:30pm, 10/23 & 30 at 3pm)

South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company and the Sogolon Puppet Troupe of Mali come together to present us with Tall Horse, a tale flipping the empire on its tail, documenting the African conquest of Europe’s imagination, in the form of a very tall and beautiful giraffe (here, a puppet), sent by the Pasha of Egypt to King Charles of France in 1826. Based (mostly) on a true story. (10/4-8 at 7:30pm, 10/9 at 3pm)

The festival continues into November with further offerings. Tickets: $20 - $60.
For more info: www.bam.org

Pier 25: Shakespeare’s Haunt

Pier 25 is about to close shop, for an extensive “renovation.” But before it does, let the spirits of William Shakespeare and some of his most memorable characters guide you through the site, aboard the historic Yankee Ferry and through the Bard’s own ever-haunting dramas. Crowds will be led through the Hall of Fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, examine Julius Caesar’s wounds, dip toes into Ophelia’s Riverbed of Death (Hamlet), journey through a Shakespearean Chamber of Darkness and dine at the table of Titus Andronicus (where Titus is served a pie with a special filling – his family).

The Faux-Real Theatre Company’s William Shakespeare’s Haunted Pier, created and directed by Mark Greenfield, is presented by Chashama, to celebrate Manhattan Youth’s twelve years of community service at Pier 25, creating after-school programs for local children and assisting in community planning for Battery Park City and its parks.

Performances: 10/29 & 30, 2-6pm, 10/31 4-8pm, Pier 25, West Side Highway @ North Moore Street (perhaps Othello will be there to mark the spot). Tickets: $5 at the door. The show is cyclical in format, with 45-minute loops throughout the 4-hour performance. Audiences can roam as they choose; there will be a special section of the pier designated for “impressionable” younger audiences. For more info, visit www.chashama.org or www.FauxReal.org